Barcelona, Spain, 15th February 2010: Imagination Technologies, the leading multimedia chip technologies company, reports that, with over 100 products from a wide range of leading OEMs now shipping using its POWERVR SGX graphics acceleration technology 2010 will be the year in which OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics overtakes OpenGL ES 1.1 devices in terms of new deployments, ushering in a new era of responsive, intuitive and visually stunning user interfaces (UIs), advanced console class gaming ,innovative 3D personal navigation, unconstrained mobile internet browsing and more on phones and other mobile and embedded devices.

The company, whose POWERVR technology is widely respected as the standard for 3D acceleration in mobile and embedded devices, has developed a worldwide user base for its multimedia technologies which is growing in excess of 50% year on year. Imagination’s POWERVR technologies are used by leading semiconductor companies including Intel, NEC, Renesas, Samsung and Texas Instruments, and by top mobile brands including Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, and HTC.

Says Dr. Jon Peddie, president, Jon Peddie Research: “”Simply put: Imagination’s POWERVR is the standard for mobile 3D graphics. The company has built an enviable lead, but more than that it has created an opportunity for both its customers, and the wider developer ecosystem to build a market that for applications alone will be worth more than $5 billion dollars in 2010. However it’s their overall capabilities in all aspects of multimedia that impresses.””

Total HD capable multimedia solutions the next step

Consumers don’t see content in the same way as technology companies. They simply want to see their videos and games in the highest quality, at high frame rates, and with ever richer content. User interfaces too need to reflect the growing need for users to organise and browse video just as easily as audio or photos, and for two-way video-based social networking to become as natural as a normal phone call is today. All of this needs highly integrated video and graphics as well as audio to get the job done – all at up to 1080p display resolutions.

Says Tony King-Smith, VP marketing, Imagination: “”Our success in graphics is now being reflected in increasing adoption of our video IP solutions by industry leaders like Intel. This high-performance technology is built on taking an innovative approach to delivering multi-stream HD multi-standard decode and encode for all the major standards, such as H.264 at the highest profiles, while keeping the power consumption low enough for mobile.””

Support for all the latest video trends such as Scalable Video Codec (SVC), Multiview Video Codec (MVC) and stereoscopic 3D TV are already in advanced development by Imagination.

Continues King-Smith: “”There’s also great interest in our new META AXD audio platform, which fully offloads the host CPU for advanced audio codecs like HE AAC and 7.1 surround at low system latencies thanks to our unique hardware multi-threading technologies. Our customers are increasingly looking for Imagination to deliver a total multimedia solution and we’re more than ready to meet that need today. We believe we have the world’s best video and audio IP cores to complement our industry leading graphics, and all at ultra low power and small silicon area. By combining these functions, we can fully optimise all aspects of operation, enabling these high performance functions to become ubiquitous sooner for consumers.””

Building ecosystems and presence at monthly shows and events

POWERVR SGX graphics is already designed into the vast majority of shipping mobile applications processor SoCs with 3D acceleration today. Imagination measures its success in terms of shipping units (now in excess of 200m), the number of SoCs in production or sampling (now over 35), and number of products using its technologies (which includes over 150 OpenGL ES 1.1 products and 100 supporting full OpenGL ES 2.0.)

Imagination will be debuting and demonstrating IP cores for mobile phone multimedia, handheld multimedia, home consumer, mobile computing and in-car electronics at leading industry events world-wide throughout 2010, including:

About Imagination TechnologiesImagination Technologies Group plc (LSE:IMG) – a global leader in multimedia and communication silicon technologies – creates and licenses market-leading processor cores for graphics, video, multi-threaded embedded processing/DSP and multi-standard communications applications. These silicon intellectual property (IP) solutions for systems-on-chip (SoC) are complemented by strong array of software tools and drivers as well as extensive developer and middleware ecosystems. Target markets include mobile phone, handheld multimedia, home consumer entertainment, mobile and low-power computing, and in-car electronics. Its licensees include many of the leading semiconductor and consumer electronics companies. Imagination has corporate headquarters in the United Kingdom, with sales and R&D offices worldwide. See: www.imgtec.com.

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